Harold Brown Chair; Director, Transnational Threats Project; and Senior Adviser, International Security Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Seth G. Jones holds the Harold Brown Chair, is director of the Transnational Threats Project, and is a senior adviser to the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Prior to joining CSIS, Dr. Jones was the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation. He also served as representative for the commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Before that, he was a plans officer and adviser to the commanding general, U.S. Special Operations Forces, in Afghanistan (Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command–Afghanistan). In 2014, Dr. Jones served on a congressionally mandated panel that reviewed the FBI’s implementation of counterterrorism recommendations contained in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Dr. Jones specializes in counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, unconventional warfare, and covert action, including a focus on al Qaeda and ISIS. He is the author of A Covert Action: Reagan, the CIA, and the Cold War Struggle in Poland (W.W. Norton, 2018), Waging Insurgent Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2016), Hunting in the Shadows: The Pursuit of al Qa'ida after 9/11 (W.W. Norton, 2012), and In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (W.W. Norton, 2009). Dr. Jones has published articles in a range of journals, such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and International Security, as well as newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Dr. Jones is a graduate of Bowdoin College and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
Freedom Scholar, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Dr. Michael Ledeen is freedom scholar at FDD, and is an internationally-renowned scholar on Iran, Iraq, terrorism, and international security, and a world-renowned Italianist and expert on fascism. Ledeen has served as a consultant to the National Security Council and the Departments of State and Defense, and as a special advisor to the Secretary of State.
He is the author of more than 35 books, including Field of Fight: How to Win the War Against Radical Islam and its Allies, co-authored with General Michael T. Flynn (St. Martin’s Press, 2016). His previous books include Accomplice to Evil: Iran and the War Against the West; The War Against the Terror Masters; The Iranian Time Bomb; Tocqueville on American Character; and Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away.
Ledeen regularly appears on cable news and talk radio programs, blogs at Forbes, The Hill, and PJ Media, and contributes periodically to The Wall Street Journal. Michael holds a PhD in Modern European History and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, and has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Rome.
Professor, Jagiellonian University
Prof. Bryk is the director of the Institute of American Studies, Krakow Academy as well as a professor of constitutional law and history, political philosophy at the Krakow Academy and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He is also a visiting professor at such institutions as: Harvard University, Marquette University, Amherst College, University of New Hampshire, Institute of the European Studies, Vienna.
Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, and the E. W. Richardson Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is the vice president of Heritage's Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and the E. W. Richardson Fellow.
Carafano is an accomplished historian and teacher as well as a prolific writer and researcher. His most recent publication is an e-book, “Surviving the End”, which addresses emergency preparedness. He also authored “Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World” (Texas A&M University Press, 2012), a survey of the revolutionary impact of the Internet age on national security. He was selected from thousands to speak on cyber warfare at the 2014 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas, the nation’s premier tech and social media conference.
Before assuming responsibility for Heritage’s entire defense and foreign policy team in December 2012, Carafano had served as deputy director of the Davis Institute as well as director of its Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies since 2009.
His recent research has focused on developing the national security required to secure the long-term interests of the United States -- protecting the public, providing for economic growth and preserving civil liberties.
He is editor of a book series, The Changing Face of War, which examines how emerging political, social, economic and cultural trends will affect the nature of armed conflict. From 2012 to 2014, he served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council convened by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Carafano, a 25-year Army veteran with a master’s and doctorate from Georgetown University, joined Heritage in 2003 as a senior research fellow in homeland security and missile defense. He worked with Kim R. Holmes, his predecessor as vice president and director of Davis Institute, to produce Heritage’s groundbreaking documentary film “33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age.”
Carafano now directs Heritage's team of foreign and defense policy experts in three centers on the front lines of international affairs: the Allison Center, the Asian Studies Center, the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, and the Center for National Defense.
Carafano also is president of a nonprofit organization, Esprit de Corps, which educates the public about veteran affairs. In this capacity he co-produced and co-wrote the documentary “Veteran Nation,” an official selection of the 2013 G.I. Film Festival.
Before coming to Heritage, Carafano was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington policy institute dedicated to defense issues.
In his Army career, Carafano rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in Europe, Korea and the United States. His assignments included head speechwriter for the Army Chief of Staff, the service's highest-ranking officer. Before retiring, Carafano was executive editor of Joint Force Quarterly, the Defense Department's premiere professional military journal.
A graduate of West Point, Carafano holds a master's degree and a doctorate from Georgetown University as well as a master's degree in strategy from the U.S. Army War College.
He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and serves as a visiting professor at National Defense University. He currently sits on the Board of Advisors for Daniel Morgan Academy. He previously served as an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and as director of military studies at the Army's Center of Military History. He taught at Mount Saint Mary College in New York and was a fleet professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
He is the co-author with Paul Rosenzweig of Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom (2005). The authors, first to coin the term “the long war,” argued that a successful strategy requires a balance of prudent military and security measures, continued economic growth, zealous protection of civil liberties and prevailing in the “war of ideas” against terrorist ideologies.
Carafano also co-authored a textbook, Homeland Security (McGraw-Hill, second edition 2012), designed as a practical introduction to everyday life in the era of terrorism. The textbook addresses such key details as the roles of first responders and volunteers, family preparedness techniques and in-depth looks at weapons of mass destruction.
His other works include Private Sector/Public Wars: Contracting in Combat--Iraq, Afghanistan and Future Conflicts (2008); G.I. Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology and Winning World War II (2006); Waltzing Into the Cold War (2002); and After D-Day (2000), a Military Book Club main selection.
As an expert on foreign affairs, defense, intelligence and homeland security issues, Carafano has testified many times before Congress.
He is a regular guest analyst for the major U.S. network and cable television news organizations, from ABC to Fox to MSNBC to PBS, as well as such outlets as National Public Radio, Pajamas TV, Voice of America and the History Channel. From SkyNews to Al Jazeera, he also has appeared on TV news programs originating in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Iran, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Vietnam.
Carafano’s op-ed columns and commentary are published widely, including the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today and Washington Times in addition to Forbes.
He served on the board of trustees of the Marine Corps University Foundation and advisory boards for the West Point Center of Oral History, the Hamilton Society, the Spirit of America, and the Operation Renewed Hope Foundation, which serves homeless veterans. He formerly was a senior fellow at George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute. He also previously served on the congressionally-mandated Advisory Panel on Department of Defense Capabilities for Support of Civil Authorities, the National Academy's Board on Army Science and Technology and the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee.
In 2005, he received Heritage's prestigious W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award. The honor goes to the staff member determined to have made “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and promotion of the free society.”
Associate Professor, Catholic University of America
Jakub Grygiel is an associate professor at the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC). In 2017-2018 he was a senior advisor to the Secretary of State in the Office of Policy Planning working on European affairs. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and on the faculty of SAIS-Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. He is the author of Return of the Barbarians (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (JHU Press, 2006), and co-author with Wess Mitchell of The Unquiet Frontier (Princeton University Press, 2016). His writings on international relations and security studies have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Commentary, Parameters, as well as several U.S. and foreign newspapers. He earned a Ph.D., M.A. and an MPA from Princeton University, and a BSFS Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University.
Professor, Jagiellonian University
Prof. Bryk is the director of the Institute of American Studies, Krakow Academy as well as a professor of constitutional law and history, political philosophy at the Krakow Academy and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He is also a visiting professor at such institutions as: Harvard University, Marquette University, Amherst College, University of New Hampshire, Institute of the European Studies, Vienna.
Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, and the E. W. Richardson Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is the vice president of Heritage's Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy and the E. W. Richardson Fellow.
Carafano is an accomplished historian and teacher as well as a prolific writer and researcher. His most recent publication is an e-book, “Surviving the End”, which addresses emergency preparedness. He also authored “Wiki at War: Conflict in a Socially Networked World” (Texas A&M University Press, 2012), a survey of the revolutionary impact of the Internet age on national security. He was selected from thousands to speak on cyber warfare at the 2014 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas, the nation’s premier tech and social media conference.
Before assuming responsibility for Heritage’s entire defense and foreign policy team in December 2012, Carafano had served as deputy director of the Davis Institute as well as director of its Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies since 2009.
His recent research has focused on developing the national security required to secure the long-term interests of the United States -- protecting the public, providing for economic growth and preserving civil liberties.
He is editor of a book series, The Changing Face of War, which examines how emerging political, social, economic and cultural trends will affect the nature of armed conflict. From 2012 to 2014, he served on the Homeland Security Advisory Council convened by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Carafano, a 25-year Army veteran with a master’s and doctorate from Georgetown University, joined Heritage in 2003 as a senior research fellow in homeland security and missile defense. He worked with Kim R. Holmes, his predecessor as vice president and director of Davis Institute, to produce Heritage’s groundbreaking documentary film “33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age.”
Carafano now directs Heritage's team of foreign and defense policy experts in three centers on the front lines of international affairs: the Allison Center, the Asian Studies Center, the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, and the Center for National Defense.
Carafano also is president of a nonprofit organization, Esprit de Corps, which educates the public about veteran affairs. In this capacity he co-produced and co-wrote the documentary “Veteran Nation,” an official selection of the 2013 G.I. Film Festival.
Before coming to Heritage, Carafano was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington policy institute dedicated to defense issues.
In his Army career, Carafano rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in Europe, Korea and the United States. His assignments included head speechwriter for the Army Chief of Staff, the service's highest-ranking officer. Before retiring, Carafano was executive editor of Joint Force Quarterly, the Defense Department's premiere professional military journal.
A graduate of West Point, Carafano holds a master's degree and a doctorate from Georgetown University as well as a master's degree in strategy from the U.S. Army War College.
He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and serves as a visiting professor at National Defense University. He currently sits on the Board of Advisors for Daniel Morgan Academy. He previously served as an assistant professor at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and as director of military studies at the Army's Center of Military History. He taught at Mount Saint Mary College in New York and was a fleet professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
He is the co-author with Paul Rosenzweig of Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom (2005). The authors, first to coin the term “the long war,” argued that a successful strategy requires a balance of prudent military and security measures, continued economic growth, zealous protection of civil liberties and prevailing in the “war of ideas” against terrorist ideologies.
Carafano also co-authored a textbook, Homeland Security (McGraw-Hill, second edition 2012), designed as a practical introduction to everyday life in the era of terrorism. The textbook addresses such key details as the roles of first responders and volunteers, family preparedness techniques and in-depth looks at weapons of mass destruction.
His other works include Private Sector/Public Wars: Contracting in Combat--Iraq, Afghanistan and Future Conflicts (2008); G.I. Ingenuity: Improvisation, Technology and Winning World War II (2006); Waltzing Into the Cold War (2002); and After D-Day (2000), a Military Book Club main selection.
As an expert on foreign affairs, defense, intelligence and homeland security issues, Carafano has testified many times before Congress.
He is a regular guest analyst for the major U.S. network and cable television news organizations, from ABC to Fox to MSNBC to PBS, as well as such outlets as National Public Radio, Pajamas TV, Voice of America and the History Channel. From SkyNews to Al Jazeera, he also has appeared on TV news programs originating in Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Estonia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Iran, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Vietnam.
Carafano’s op-ed columns and commentary are published widely, including the Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today and Washington Times in addition to Forbes.
He served on the board of trustees of the Marine Corps University Foundation and advisory boards for the West Point Center of Oral History, the Hamilton Society, the Spirit of America, and the Operation Renewed Hope Foundation, which serves homeless veterans. He formerly was a senior fellow at George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute. He also previously served on the congressionally-mandated Advisory Panel on Department of Defense Capabilities for Support of Civil Authorities, the National Academy's Board on Army Science and Technology and the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Committee.
In 2005, he received Heritage's prestigious W. Glenn and Rita Ricardo Campbell Award. The honor goes to the staff member determined to have made “an outstanding contribution to the analysis and promotion of the free society.”
Associate Professor, Catholic University of America
Jakub Grygiel is an associate professor at the Catholic University of America (Washington, DC). In 2017-2018 he was a senior advisor to the Secretary of State in the Office of Policy Planning working on European affairs. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and on the faculty of SAIS-Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. He is the author of Return of the Barbarians (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (JHU Press, 2006), and co-author with Wess Mitchell of The Unquiet Frontier (Princeton University Press, 2016). His writings on international relations and security studies have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, Commentary, Parameters, as well as several U.S. and foreign newspapers. He earned a Ph.D., M.A. and an MPA from Princeton University, and a BSFS Summa Cum Laude from Georgetown University.
Executive in Residence, Wake Forest University School of Business
John Allison is an Executive in Residence at the Wake Forest School of Business. He is a member of the Cato Institute’s Board of Directors and Chairman of the Executive Advisory Council of the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives. Allison was president and CEO of the Cato Institute from October 2012 to April 2015. Prior to joining Cato, Allison was chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation, the 10th-largest financial services holding company headquartered in the United States. During his tenure as CEO from 1989 to 2008, BB&T grew from $4.5 billion to $152 billion in assets. He was recognized by theHarvard Business Reviewas one of the top 100 most successful CEOs in the world over the last decade.
Allison has received the Corning Award for Distinguished Leadership, been inducted into the North Carolina Business Hall of Fame, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from theAmerican Banker. He is the author of The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why Pure Capitalism Is the World Economy’s Only Hope and The Leadership Crisis and the Free Market Cure: Why the Future of Business Depends on the Return to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In addition, he is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University School of Business, and serves on the Board of Visitors at the business schools at Wake Forest, Duke, and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.
Allison is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He received his master’s degree in management from Duke University and is also a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking. Allison is the recipient of six honorary doctorate degrees.
Wayne A. Abernathy, Wild Bells
Wayne A. Abernathy is a former U.S. Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions under President George W. Bush, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Award in recognition of his service. In that office he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. Prior to his work at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy served as Staff Director of the Senate Banking Committee, under Chairman Phil Gramm.
Following his service at the Treasury, Mr. Abernathy worked for 15 years on the staff of the American Bankers Association, as Executive Vice President for Financial Institutions Policy and Regulatory Affairs.
Previous experience with the Senate Banking Committee includes serving as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Securities during 1995-1998. From 1989 until 1994, Mr. Abernathy was a Republican economist for the committee. He previously worked as a senior legislative assistant for Senator Gramm during 1987-1989 and as an economist for the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy during 1981-1986, under Chairman Jake Garn.
Mr. Abernathy earned his bachelor’s degree in International Studies from The Johns Hopkins University in 1978. In 1980, he received a master’s degree in International Studies from the School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
Director of the Program in Human Rights, Catholic University of America
William L. Saunders is Chair Emeritus of the Religious Liberties Practice Group of the Federalist Society. He is also a religious liberty and human rights scholar as well as director of the Center for Human rights at The Catholic University of America. He is Law Fellow with the Institute for Human Ecology, Professor and Director of the Program in Human Rights in the School of Arts & Sciences and Co-director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Columbus School of Law. Before joining The Catholic University of America, Mr. Saunders served as Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel with Americans United for Life for ten years. From 1999 to 2009, he was Senior Fellow in Bioethics and Human Rights Counsel at the Family Research Council.
Mr. Saunders attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on a Morehead scholarship. He obtained his degree in law from the Harvard Law School.
Mr. Saunders was featured in Harvard’s first Guide to Conservative Public Interest Law in 2003 and again in the 2008 edition. He served on Harvard’s Advisory Committee for its 2008 celebration of public interest law. A member of the Supreme Court bar, he has authored numerous legal briefs in state, federal, foreign, and international courts.
Mr. Saunders’ book, Unborn Human Life and Fundamental Rights: Leading Constitutional Cases Under Scrutiny, was published in 2019. His articles and book chapters have been published by the university presses of Harvard, Villanova, Brigham Young, Fordham, Georgetown, Houston, Scranton, and the Catholic University of America, as well as by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Freedom House, Greenhaven Press, Rowan & Littlefield, Praeger, St. Augustine’s, and Intervarsity press. He has given lectures and participated in debates at many colleges, universities, and law schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Georgetown, and Notre Dame. He delivered the annual J. Michael Miller Lecture at the University of St. Thomas (on international law) in February 2007, the annual R. Wayne Kraft Memorial Lecture (on bioethics) at DeSales University in February 2004 and the annual James Moore Lecture (on human rights violations in Sudan) at Millikin University in 1999. He has also lectured, and/or has been published, in many foreign countries, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Austria, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Mexico, Qatar, Malaysia, Romania, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom.
In addition to speaking and writing frequently on bioethics topics, Mr. Saunders has submitted testimony to the President’s Council on Bioethics, as well as to UNESCO’s Committee on Bioethics, and has briefed Congressional staff and state legislatures. He is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.
Mr. Saunders has appeared often in the media, including BBC World News, CNN, Fox News, Vatican Radio, and National Public Radio. His articles on issues have appeared in a variety of journals, such as First Things, Human Events, Human Life Review, The Legal Times, Communio, The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy, Ethics & Medics, and Touchstone.
Mr. Saunders served on the official United States delegation to the UN Special Session on Children in 2001/02. In 2011, he was a speaker at an official briefing at the UN, addressing the topic, why euthanasia is not a human right.
In 2004, he served on the NGO Working Committee in connection with the Doha Intergovernmental Conference for the Family.
Mr. Saunders is Senior Fellow with the Religious Freedom Institute, and Affiliated Scholar with the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Ethics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a member of the boards of the International Association of Catholic Bioethicists, the International Right to Life Federation, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.
In 1999, Mr. Saunders founded Sudan Relief and Rescue, Inc., to aid the persecuted church in Sudan. He has worked for and written on behalf of the persecuted church for many years.
Senior Fellow, National Review
Bestselling author Andrew C. McCarthy is a contributing editor at National Review, a senior fellow at National Review Institute, and a Fox News contributor. He is a former Chief Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York and led the terrorism prosecution against the “Blind Sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman) and eleven other jihadists for conducting a war of urban terrorism against the United States that included the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. During is 20-year career as a prosecutor, he received numerous honors, including the Justice Department’s highest awards. Andy speaks and writes widely on law and national security, radical Islam, politics, and culture. He has testified before Congress as an expert on issues of constitutional law, counterterrorism, and law-enforcement. He is a columnist for The Hill, and his essays and book reviews appear frequently at The New Criterion. His most recent New York Times bestselling book is Ball of Collusion (Encounter Books, 2019), about the Russiagate controversy (an updated version was published in 2020). His other books include Willful Blindness (2008), The Grand Jihad (2010), Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy (2012), and Faithless Execution (2014). He has also written several pamphlets in the Broadside series published by Encounter Books, most recently Islam and Free Speech (2015).
Former United States Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey is the former Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. As Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009, he oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and advised on critical issues of domestic and international law.
From 1988 to 2006, Judge Mukasey served as a district judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, becoming Chief Judge in 2000.
From 1972 to 1976, Judge Mukasey served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and as Chief of the Official Corruption Unit from 1975 to 1976. His practice consisted of criminal litigation on behalf of the government, including investigation and prosecution of narcotics, bank robbery, interstate theft, securities fraud, fraud on the government and bribery. From 1976 to 1987 and from 2006 to 2007 he was in private practice.
Judge Mukasey has received numerous honors, including the Federal Bar Council’s Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence. He served as Chairman of the Committee on Public Access to Information and Proceedings of the New York Bar Association from 1984 to 1987. He served on the Federal Courts Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1979 to 1982 and its Communications Law Committee from 1983 to 1986. Judge Mukasey was also a part-time lecturer at Columbia School of Law from January 1993 to May 2007, teaching trial advocacy.
He received his LL.B. from Yale Law School in 1967 and his B.A. from Columbia College in 1963.
Secretary, US Department of Transportation
The Honorable Elaine L. Chao, the 24th U. S. Secretary of Labor who served from 2001-2009, is the first American woman of Asian descent to be appointed to a President’s Cabinet in our nation’s history. On January 31, 2017, she was confirmed as the 18th U.S. Secretary of Transportation.
An immigrant who arrived in America at the age of eight speaking no English, Secretary Chao received her citizenship at the age of 19. Her experience transitioning to a new country has motivated her to dedicate most of her professional life to ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to build better lives.
As the first U. S. Secretary of Labor in the 21st century, Elaine L. Chao focused on increasing the competitiveness of America’s workforce by restructuring department programs to empower workers and modernizing regulations to respond to the realities of the 21st century workplace. Under her leadership, the U.S. Department of Labor achieved record results in protecting the health, safety, wages, and retirement security of the nation’s workforce.
Secretary Chao’s distinguished career spans the public, private and non-profit sectors. As President and Chief Executive Officer of United Way of America, she restored public trust and confidence in one of our nation’s premier charitable institutions after it had been tarnished by financial mismanagement and abuse. As Director of the Peace Corps, she established the first programs in the newly liberated Baltic nations and the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Her government service also includes serving as Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation, Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission, Deputy Maritime Administrator, and White House Fellow. Prior to her government service, she was Vice President of Syndications at BankAmerica Capital Markets Group and a banker with Citicorp in New York.
Secretary Chao earned her MBA from the Harvard Business School and an economics degree from Mount Holyoke College. Recognized with innumerable awards for her public and community service, she is the recipient of 36 honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities across the globe.
Secretary Chao is a resident of Kentucky. Prior to her appointment as Secretary of Transportation, she was a Distinguished Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
She is the eldest of six daughters of Dr. James S.C. Chao and the late Mrs. Ruth Mulan Chu Chao.
David McIntosh is a leader for the principles of limited constitutional government and individual freedom. He is president of the Club for Growth, the leading advocate for economic liberty.
Former Congressman David McIntosh represented Indiana's 2nd Congressional District in the United States Congress from 1995-2001. As a Freshman, David chaired the Subcommittee on Regulatory Relief. He passed the Congressional Review Act and held extensive oversight and field hearings to build a record of public support for regulatory relief initiatives in energy, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, healthcare, transportation and technology sectors. Another issue that he championed was the elimination of the marriage penalty in the Federal Tax Code.
David served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and as special assistant to President Reagan for Domestic Affairs. During the first Bush administration, he served as executive director of the President's Council on Competitiveness and assistant to the Vice President. The Competitiveness Council coordinated the cost/benefit review of major regulations and promoted legal reform measures.
David is a co-founder of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and serves on the Board of Directors. He remains active with several free market and conservative think tanks and grassroots organizations. David has also had stints at the Hudson Institute and as a Professor of Economics at Ball State School of Business.
Prior to the Club for Growth, David was a partner at Mayer Brown, LLP in Washington, DC.
David graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983, and Yale University, BA, cum laude, in 1980. He and his wife, Ruthie, are the proud parents of Ellie age 17 and Davey age 13.
Partner, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Theodore B. Olson is a Partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C. office; a founder of the Firm’s Crisis Management, Sports Law, and Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Groups.
Mr. Olson was Solicitor General of the United States during the period 2001-2004. From 1981-1984, he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. Except for those two intervals, he has been a lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. since 1965.
Selected by Time magazine in 2010 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, Mr. Olson is one of the nation’s premier appellate and United States Supreme Court advocates. He has argued 65 cases in the Supreme Court and has prevailed in over 75% of those cases. These include the two Bush v Gore cases arising out of the 2000 presidential election; Citizens United v Federal Election Commission; Hollingsworth v Perry, the case affirming the overturning of California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages; Murphy v NCAA, overturning a federal law prohibiting states from authorizing sports betting; and U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security v Regents of the Univ. of Calif., challenging the Trump Administration’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”). Mr. Olson’s practice is concentrated on appellate and constitutional law, federal legislation, media and commercial disputes, and assisting clients with strategies for the containment, management and resolution of major legal crises. He has handled cases at all levels of state and federal court systems throughout the United States. Mr. Olson co-authored “Redeeming the Dream, the Case for Marriage Equality” with David Boies. Both were featured in HBO’s award-winning documentary, “The Case Against 8.”
Mr. Olson's Supreme Court arguments have included cases involving separation of powers; federalism; voting rights; the Tenth Amendment; the First Amendment; the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses; jury trial rights; punitive damages; takings of property; the Commerce Clause; administrative law; taxation; criminal law; sports wagering; copyright, patent and antitrust; securities; campaign finance; foreign sovereign immunities; telecommunications; the environment; the internet; the Supremacy Clause; and other federal constitutional and statutory questions. As Solicitor General, during the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Olson was the Government's principal advocate in the United States Supreme Court, responsible for supervising and coordinating all appellate litigation of the United States, and a legal adviser to the President and the Attorney General. As Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan Administration, Mr. Olson was the Executive Branch's principal legal adviser, rendering legal guidance to the President and to the heads of the Executive Branch departments on a wide range of constitutional and federal statutory questions, and assisting in formulating and articulating the Executive Branch's position on constitutional issues.
Mr. Olson has served as private counsel to two Presidents, Ronald W. Reagan and George W. Bush, in addition to serving those two Presidents in high-level positions in the Department of Justice. He has twice been awarded the United States Department of Justice's Edmund J. Randolph Award, its highest award for public service and leadership, and also received the Department of Defense's Distinguished Public Service Award, its highest civilian award, for his advocacy in the courts of the United States, including the Supreme Court. He also received the American Bar Association Medal, its highest award for “exceptionally distinguished service by a lawyer or lawyers to the cause of American jurisprudence.” Mr. Olson is to receive the 2021 Jack Valenti Friend of the White House Fellows Award in the Fall of 2021 to be presented by the White House Fellows Foundation and Association.
Mr. Olson is a member of the Commission on White House Fellowships; a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation; a member of the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society; the Board of Directors of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; and the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial Foundation. He was a visiting scholar at the National Constitution Center in 2007. He served on the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2006 to 2008; and of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States from 2010 to 2020. He was Co-Chair of the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy from 2008-2009, and served two terms on the Board of Directors of the National Center for State Courts.
Mr. Olson is a Fellow of both the American College of Trial Lawyers and the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers. He has been repeatedly listed in legal publications as one of the nation’s leading appellate lawyers. The late New York Times columnist William Safire described Mr. Olson as his generation's "most persuasive advocate" before the Supreme Court and "the most effective Solicitor General in decades.”
Mr. Olson received his law degree in 1965 from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) where he was a member of the California Law Review and Order of the Coif. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of the Pacific, where he was recognized as the outstanding graduating student in both forensics and journalism. He has written and lectured extensively on appellate advocacy, oral communication in the courtroom, civil justice reform, and constitutional and administrative law.
Senior Fellow, National Security Institute, Antonin Scalia School of Law, George Mason University; Retired Professor, Distinguished Fellow and Co-Founder, Center for National Security Law, University of Virginia School of Law (1987-2020)
Robert F. Turner holds both professional and academic doctorates from the University of Virginia School of Law. He co-founded the Center for National Security Law with Professor John Norton Moore in April 1981 and served as its associate director for 39 years, except for two periods of government service in the 1980s and during 1994-95, when he occupied the Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He retired from UVA in January 2020 and currently serves as a non-resident senior fellow at the GMU National Security Institute. He also served briefly in 2020 as President of the Crime Prevention Research Center—one of the most respected pro-Second Amendment groups in the country—while its founder, Dr. John Lott, was on leave of absence.
A former Army captain and veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Turner served as a research associate and public affairs fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace before spending five years in the mid-1970s as national security adviser to U.S. Senator Robert P. Griffin, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (where Turner anticipated by seven years the Supreme Court’s landmark INS v. Chadha decision, striking down legislative vetoes). He also served in the executive branch during the Reagan administration as a member of the Senior Executive Service, first in the Pentagon as special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, then in the White House as counsel to the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, and at the State Department as principal deputy and then acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs. In 1986, he became the first president of the congressionally established United States Institute of Peace.
A former three-term chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security (and for many years editor of the ABA National Security Law Report), Turner also chaired the Executive-Congressional Relations Subcommittee of the ABA Section on International Law and Practice and chaired or co-chaired the National Security Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s International and National Security Law Practice Group for several years.
Turner taught undergraduate courses at Virginia on international law, U.S. foreign policy, the Vietnam War and foreign policy and the law in what is now the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics. In addition, he co-taught National Security Law and advanced national security law seminars on the Indochina War and on war and peace with Moore at the Law School.
The author or editor of 17 books and monographs (including co-editor of the Center's 1,600-page National Security Law & Policy casebook, National Security Law Documents, and Legal Issues in the Struggle Against Terror) and numerous articles in law reviews and other professional journals, Turner has also contributed articles to most of the major U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times and USA Today. In an op-ed published in The International Herald Tribune in September 1990, he and Moore were the first to call for a war-crimes trial for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and for international controls over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and the following month he wrote the lead story in The Washington Post Sunday Outlook Section, “Killing Saddam: Would It Be a Crime?,” arguing that Hussein would be a lawful target during Operation Desert Storm. (His reasoning contributed to the modern legal justification for drone strikes targeting specific terrorist leaders.) Three years before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Turner published an op-ed in USA Today entitled: “In Self-defense, U.S. Has Right to Kill bin Laden.”
In July 2007, he co-authored an article in The Washington Post with former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley, “War Crimes and the White House,” criticizing the use of unlawful “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the Central Intelligence Agency. On the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon he authored an article in The Wall Street Journal, “Saigon’s Fall Still Echoes Today,” noting that after the war ended, Hanoi admitted it had made a decision in 1959 to open the Ho Chi Minh Trail and start sending troops, weapons and supplies into South Vietnam to overthrow its government — just as the United States had charged. In 2010 Turner received the first “person of the year” award from SACEI, a major Vietnamese-American human rights organization.
A frequent lecturer and debater, Turner has spoken at more than 100 law schools around the nation and in other fora — taking on as many as four opponents at a time. His debate opponents have included former or future deans of Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Berkeley law schools. Following a 1987 debate against Dean Harlan Cleveland (Rhodes Scholar, U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient) in which Turner defended the legality of U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras during the Reagan Administration, the host student debating societies awarded Turner the victory by an 85-to-15 percent margin.
Turner has also written and lectured widely on University of Virginia founder and America’s third president Thomas Jefferson. In 2000-2001 he chaired the Jefferson-Hemings Scholars Commission. In his 2012 book Master of the Mountain, Jefferson critic Henry Wiencek described Turner as “Jefferson’s chief scholarly defender."
A former distinguished lecturer at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Turner is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Academy of Political Science, the Committee on the Present Danger, The Heterodox Academy, and other professional organizations. He maintained a 4.0 gpa as a graduate student at Stanford in History and Political Science and in the UVA Department of Government and Foreign Affairs and was the first person admitted directly to the UVA academic law doctorate (SJD) program without first being required to earn an LL.M. master’s degree. He was selected for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Law less than two years after graduating from law school and Who’s Who in the World before he reached the age of 40. Turner has testified before more than a dozen different congressional committees on issues of international or constitutional law and other topics.
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